Its impossible to get an unbaised opinion. Whatever truck you grew up with is always the best in your mind. Thats why people with Fords say Chevy and Dodge suck, people with Chevys say Ford and Dodge sucks and so on.

Who ever told you Dodge's aren't reliable and suck probably has drive a Chevy his hole life and never touched a Dodge, so how would they know?

Anyways I love my Dodge. 120k on her with the original tranny. Other maintenence has just been your basic 100K+ milage stuff. They really easy to work on too

 

Mine has 368k on it. I have just taken care of it.Rams are the best!

 

woohoo

 

yeaI have 131,000 miles on my truck with the same tranny it seems to run fine

 

I wouldn't say they're weak but they do require a little attention or you'll probably end up paying. With regular maitainance (fluid changes and band adjustment etc.) they seem to last. I know with some vehicles I've owned in the past I would somewhat ignore the tranny and just expect it to last. Put a tranny cooler on it and service it regularly and it should be fine, as long as it wasn't abused by someone previously. I have 145k on my tranny and no problems so far.

 

my 97 has 160K and have had no major repairs, just normal maint, brakes and oil changes, tune ups and such is all. My 2000 has 120K and still going strong, had some minor motor problems earlier this year, but was just tracking down a sensor that was giving me problems. So like you I was affraid of all the stories at first also, but I have had my 97 for 2 years and logged 50,000 miles on it so far myself and would not be affraid to go anywhere in it.

 

i have a 2001 1500 ram 4x4 ext. cab and while i do have to pay for repairs on my tranny , its only the torque converter that is bad and i put alot of wear on that truck , back and forth from cali to wyoming about 10 times , about 1800 miles round trip each time w/ hauling a huge trailer the whole time. so i think im pretty lucky to come out of it w/ only a small problem. i have heard the same thing about the ram and tranny problems but i chose to buy it anyways and i love my truck and dont regret my decision at all. its always a risk buying a vehicle but dodge has a great truck

 

My personal opinion with trannies is mroe or less it's the person's fault usually. Many of the issues about dodge transmissions come from people that are running chips and programmers with larger tires which adds extra stress to the drivetrain and they don't take significant measures to beef up the tranny. Then the transmission fails and they complain. This happens with all brands of trucks. Personally why I don't buy automatics.

 

I used to be die-hard Ford because of my dad and never cared for Dodge. That all changed after I had owned a 1997 F-150 with the V6. Talk about a total ****ing turd. The ex got it in the divorce, so no major loss there.

 

The man who told me this about Dodge's is my father and he's had multiple trucks of every brand in his time. He was about to buy a dodge about a year ago but just couldn't do it. Keep in mind that this guy used to turn a wrench for a living so he knows what he's talking about when it comes to vehicles.

Something I have to comment on also is that a lot of you list off your problems and say it's okay. Do you enjoy spending money on a broken down vehicle? One poster said "nothing that can't be fixed with time and money" which is ridiculous. Or maybe I just know the value of a dollar? I've had 120k absolutely trouble free miles on my current Toyota (I know someone isn't gonna like that I drive a jap truck) and I like not spending money to fix things.

I hope I'm not coming off too strong here because I don't want to start an argument. Please feel free to comment and thank you all for the replies so far. I look foward to reading more!

~Shopkeeper